Luis Suarez was on fire for Inter Miami as he got the ball in the back of the net twice without star Lionel Messi against D.C United on Saturday afternoon.
Suárez, the 37-year-old Uruguayan striker who joined his friend Messi in Major League Soccer, scored two goals in 23 minutes off the bench to help Inter Miami with three points.
Suárez entered the match as a substitute in the 62nd minute and found the back of the net ten minutes later. Then he got his second in the 85th minute to seal Inter Miami’s win.
“He had about 30 minutes in the game, and he defined the game,” Inter Miami coach Tata Martino said of Suárez, whose tear in MLS continues with six goals with five assists in seven games across all competitions.
Messi did not play due to a right hamstring injury, missing his second game of the 2024 MLS season.
Miami’s coach, Martino said the priority is for him to also be healthy for Inter Miami’s Concacaf Champions Cup quarterfinals matchup against LIGA MX side Monterrey in early April.
“We’ll continuously evaluate what he’s doing. The objective is for him to arrive to be able to play in the quarterfinals of the CONCACAF Champions Cup,” Martino said. “We don’t want to take a risk.”
Martini had also been confident in Suarez, so he expected nothing less.
“There was no reason to not be confident how he was going to perform here because two months prior, he had been performing really well,” Martino said of Suárez. “What’s important here is the confidence it generates for the team and the players.”
Messi could miss two Inter Miami games: Inter Miami vs. New York Red Bulls on March 23, when he’ll be with Argentina; and Inter Miami vs. New York City FC on March 30 for rest purposes.
